Stop Letting Straight Men Direct Musicals
Some thoughts on Joker 2: Omlet du Fromage
I saw the first Joker film, I’m not afraid to admit it. And guess what - I didn’t mind the thing.
I’m not someone who takes an interest in the expanded Marvel/DC parallel universe experience, or whatever it’s called. I haven’t truly enjoyed a superhero movie since the original Spider-Man with Tobey Maguire (ok, maybe The Meteor Man) but I don’t begrudge people their slop. If you’re having fun at the cinema, that’s alright by me. But everyone was seeing Joker, and at the end of the day - I’m everyone. So I saw it, too.
Here’s what I liked about it: Yes, it was ripping off a couple of very specific 70’s movies, but it was ripping them off well. I love Taxi Driver and I love The King of Comedy and I love movies from the 70’s, generally. I’m not even fussy about it - I love any movie from the 70’s. Even the shitty ones (sometimes the shitty ones especially). So, to see something on the big screen which evoked that look, that pace and that sound - it had a feeling of excitement to it. You start to wonder - will this approach catch on again?
But obviously, it doesn’t. People like bad CGI too much. They like the mega-verse and they like tight costumes and characters who don’t quite look like they’re in the same scene with the human actors. Again, I’m not here to judge what people like - just to look on with a sideways glance, an awry smile on my lips.
Joker had its flaws. Yes, it had incel-themes, but if we discounted every film with ‘incel-themes’ we’d have to disband Hollywood - the thing practically runs on male anger. Bertrand Bonello’s recent film The Beast has incel-themes, and everyone loves that, even though it’s kind of boring. In lots of ways, Joker was misunderstood and misrepresented. It was labeled as ‘a film for straight angry men’. Enter Joker 2: Omlet du Fromage.
Like everyone else, I was intrigued… it was almost as if the director had taken all of the criticisms and misunderstandings from the first Joker, and devised a script to ‘gay it up’ and prove all the haters wrong. A title in French? Mother Gaga in a starring role? It’s a musical!? Ok, now I’m interested (not interested enough to pay for my own ticket, but my boyfriend’s brother took care of it). If this is what a shallow, totally transparent attempt to appeal to the queers and get them in the cinema looks like, guess what - it works.
The only thing I like more than 70’s movies… are movie musicals from the 40s, 50s and 60s. Funny Face. On The Town. Calamity Jane. Annie Get Your Gun. Singin’ in the Rain. And every time I go and see a film which purports to be a ‘throwback’ to this magical era, I’m pretty much always disappointed. It never is. Whether it’s La La Land or Wonka, they never manage to stick the landing, because they’re too focused on being ‘cool’. There’s always this frustrating ‘half trying’ approach, whether it’s in the cinematography, the sets, the dancing, the singing or the song writing - there’s always something holding it back from being the truly magical thing it could (and should) be. It’s almost like the people making it don’t have the confidence in their audience to go along with something that’s unapologetically sincere. But we do. I DO! And Joker 2 keeps up this exhausting tradition of half-baked movie musicals…
The singing is ‘stylistically lazy’. The sets are bland (wow a courtroom?) Most of the musical numbers are represented as ‘dream sequences’ which means they’re sparse and dark. The rare dance numbers are played as pastiche, rather than committed to. Not one single person in the whole film does a running flip up a wall like he does in Singing in the Rain. Honestly, it’s rubbish.
The first film made such an effort to commit to the source materials it was referencing to. It was unapologetic in the way it lifted from the gritty, violent 70’s cinema it clearly loved. But this time around, the director seems timid in the way he ‘lifts’ from classic musicals. Hesitant, or embarrassed, even. Careful not to make it, somehow, too gay.
I just think, if we’re going to continue down the path of trying to ‘revive’ old Hollywood musical spectacle - can we get some homosexuals on board? Can we get some immensely gay choreography and some fruity as all hell costuming? Joker 2 was never going to be ‘for the gays’ and we were naive to think it might be. It was ‘in spite of the gays’ - a ‘musical’ done straight.
And no one needs a ‘musical done straight’... that’s how you get Cats.
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